


Apoptosis

by gigiree



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, spy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 19:16:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6091273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigiree/pseuds/gigiree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“ programmed cell death that reduces potential damage from contents released from a dying cell and mitigates ill effects of such contents on the surrounding tissue.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apoptosis

The first time they meet, she’s not quite sure who’s side he’s on.

They indulge in the golden splendor of the masque, dancing a swift Argentine tango. It’s a push and a pull, and the derisive smile that curls her lips into a full blossom as red as her mask. It entices him enough to keep going.

She knows it’s foolish and _very_  dangerous. 

But there’s something sinfully delicious about his gloved hands, searing hot as they span the skin of her lower back. It’s just barely exposed by the risque dip of her red and black gown, and he’s taken full advantage of that, subtly moving what feels like _clawed?_ fingers against the hollow at the end of her spine.

“You’re very bold, Monsieur Chat Noir.

The strings of the orchestra are plucked and played to their fullest, the song rising into the softest of crescendos as he tightens his grip on her waist, and twirls her just so.

With a high kick that is made possible by the long slit running to her lower thigh, she finds herself nestled into a fervent embrace, her arms crossed over her chest, her head heavy on his broad shoulder. 

The light of the filigreed and spun glass chandeliers is scintillating, reflecting with the same cheeky glow that glitters from his bright _green_ eyes behind his black cat mask.

He’s laughing softly, and his breath fans against the long column of her throat.

“Don’t fall for me, _My Lady._ It’s dangerous.”

She wonders if she’s just imagining it, or if there really are fangs in that smile he gives her.

“ _I won’t,_ Silly Kitty.”

She promises herself, that no matter what, she won’t. She needs to think clearly, and the mission depends upon her infiltration. Flirting with a potential enemy is not conducive to success.

So she leads him into another twirl, one that separates her enough from his presence so that she may think a little more clearly.

But his smile never wavers when he looks at her and he never grows angry.

Even when she wins this round and finds the information before he does.

* * *

The next time they meet, they have a common target.

It feels good. To be working with someone so skilled. Someone she can trust, at least in this moment.

They have more to gain by collaboration on this round, and his back pressed against hers is comforting in it’s surety. 

She can feel the reverberation, the recoil of his gun as he pushes the trigger, spitting out bullet after bullet to fend off their assailants in one direction of the tunnel. 

She wonders if he feels her desperation. The hopelessness and cold that grips her as she empties one magazine after the other. She hates this part, but she can’t let herself think that the people under the armor and helmets are anything but mooks for the “big bad”. 

Painting the scene with a black and white morality is the only way for her to forget the red that seeps from beneath corpses…the red that blends in with her gloves and her suit and the she never knows if she’s fully washed off.

Her sin in black dots, silly and integral to her secret identity.

His sin in black all over, serious and integral to his way of life.

They are quite the pair…lucky and unlucky. Ladybug and Chat Noir.

But she needs to remember why they do this. That today they kill to save a million more, and his back is against hers, so she knows she can’t fall just now.

Chat Noir smiles just a little more when he feels her back press harder into his, her recoil almost non-existent as she grounds her stance and takes it all for the sake of the mission.

* * *

His name is Adrien. He’s the son of a previous agent. And he loves to play video games and wants to learn how to bake muffins. 

He has a best friend…but that’s _classified information._

He regrets never having had the chance to have a family of his own. He regrets many things, but that seems to be the biggest one.

He tells her this as he lays heavy on her lap, and his smile is strained and his eyes aren’t as bright as they once were. There’s dried blood around the corners of his mouth, and he’s still smiling.

She wants to slap him. To tell him to shut up because he’s going to make it out of this. She can feel it in the spots of her mask and gloves, and he looks like he doesn’t believe her.

“I’m lucky. You’re with me this time. _You’ll be fine_.”

She says this with a conviction that’s  just as searing as his hand had been at the base of her spine. And she realizes that she doesn’t want this stupid cat to die…not on her lap, with his red on her hands and on her gloves. 

No black and white scenarios would be enough to make her forget if he does.

“I have one last r..regret.” He slurs.

“It’s not your last, silly kitty.” She chides, but she tenderly brushes the matted, blood spattered hair from his forehead.

He only smiles and rectifies his last regret.

“I love you, My…My lady…”

It trails off on his faint breath, and he’s quiet and his eyes are dim.

When his heart stops, and help is only two minutes away, she does the only thing she can do at the moment.

CPR…and it isn’t clean or pretty or romantic. It’s far from a kiss when the blood dislodges from his throat and his ribs crack underneath her pushes. 

But it’s enough.

He lives.

She doesn’t tell him that she fell for him too. It’s dangerous, after all. She could lose him to the job.

* * *

He’s been double crossed. He had been so blind, and it had cost him.

They’re on the run, because she was always by his side now. They’re reputation has preceded them, and it had lead to this…

But he can’t really count himself unlucky…not when cliches exist for a reason and she’s pulled him down by the lapels of his black pea coat and brought him into the sweetest of kisses.

 _“Fake-out Makeout…”_ He laughs when the danger has passed and her blue eyes peer defensively up at him from over her red scarf.

It’s cold, and the snowflakes have settled delicately around them, crowning them King and Queen of winter in a dreary little alley.

Oh it’s cold, but he feels warm enough to grin and hum contentedly when she smiles at him, amusement softening her expression into something altogether too tender for him to look at for too long without aching.

She’s kissed him. She’s saved him. He’s admitted his love many times over, but she continues to evade him. She slips through his grasp like the snowflakes that melt on his tongue.

It hurts more than the old aches of his numerous wounds.

He isn’t prepared for when the blue in her eyes crystallize to ice, and her laughter gives way to pink lips pressed into a thin, grim line.

He isn’t prepared when she pulls him down again, and kisses him _hard_.

But he gives it his all. 

His hands retrace the paths they had followed on that first night, trailing paths of welcome heat underneath the layers of her winter wear. His fingers…dull and human without his specialized gloves fall to trace the dips of her back and his warm breath ghosts delightfully through the short strands of inky hair that grace her temples.

Her arms come to wrap around his neck, trepidation evident in their stiffness despite her ardent embrace

“ _My La-”_

She presses her mouth to his once more, stops his only name for her and whispers against dry lips-

“Marinette.”

And he feels a finality to it all click into place. He’s fallen hard and he can hardly take it anymore. The ache in his gut twists into something sinuous and writhing, bubbly and _hot._

The air from their breaths clouds over, condenses as soon as it leaves their fluttering, heated chests and escapes into the blessed snow.

When she breaths _I love you_ into the hollow of his throat, she realizes that any danger this may have put them in was tantamount to small stuff when compared to _this._

She sees red behind her eyelids, but it’s a welcome beating thing made of life and adrenaline…and love.

She doesn’t need black and white…not when she has a _black cat_ and snow to help her forget the past and remember what it means _to live._

* * *

Idyllic. Without regrets is what it is.

They haven’t run for years now. 

They’ve heard from mutual friends…people on their side, that the chase has died down. They’re safe.

Marinette still wakes with nightmares. He holds her close when the hot water scalds and she’s rubbed her hands raw from trying to wash the blood from her small hands.

Adrien still has his revolver, safely stowed away under their bed and tucked into the band of his pants when he goes out to buy the ingredients for their newest baking venture.

Life drones on, and the day run together into a pleasant stream of everyday circumstances. She comes home from her job at the local bakery, smelling of sugar and freshly baked bread. Adrien thinks it’s the loveliest thing when she hugs him and he gets the strangest urge to nibble on her neck.

He comes back from the elementary school, smiling and filled with stories about what his kids did today. Marinette laughs wholeheartedly when she catches the tiny red, green and pink hand prints stamped eagerly onto his white shirt and dark slacks.

But the steady thrum numbs them, and their worry dissipates into a niggling little thing at the back of their minds.

Their guard is down, and it’s during this time that Marinette finds herself making repeated trips to the bathroom and to the physician.

The news is welcome and not, and she gives a watery smile to her husband when she tells him.

His enthusiasm is infectious as he embraces her, holds her up and up until she almost knocks into the potted ferns hanging from the roof of their small flat. She’s grateful for her small height then, especially when he begins to twirl her in a dance as easy and carefree and full of love as their first tango was filled with danger and sinful heat.

They’ve come a long way, and Adrien thinks to himself that he has no more regrets.

* * *

He is wrong. 

He catches her in the middle of inserting a new cartridge into her long unused revolver. His heart catches in his throat, the deciding click as the gun is loaded makes him feel ill.

She’s beautiful, silhouetted against the soft sunlight that streams through the gauzy curtains behind her. 

But the picture is all together surreal, when her hair is still up in the messy pigtails she wears when she’s doing chores and there are still lingering soap suds on the hands that caress the silver lines of the weapon. It’s a bit scary. 

He thinks the strangest thing though is how she uses one hand to hold the gun with the safety on, and another to caress the slight swell of her belly through her white shirt.

“Marinette, what are you doing?” His voice is harder than he means to, but he can’t bear to think about those delicate hands that cradle her child so lovingly, limp and lifeless. Stained red…not this time.

She’s crying when she looks at him, but the determination in her eyes is outmatched by the look of despair in his.

“I can’t. I have to finish them before they find us.” She chokes past her sobs, and she fights him when he carefully, slowly reaches for the gun in her trembling grasp.

“Marinette…you can’t…the baby.” He speaks low and calm, but he’s scared. It’s gripping his chest in an iron grip as cold and icy as Marinette’s eyes had been on that snowy day.

“Exactly. For the baby…for you…I’m l-lucky. I won’t die.” But the conviction in her voice is gone, because she knew from the start that he was always going to go alone.

“You’re right.” He says, smiling past his fear to tell her this.

She is shocked into stunned silence, and it is enough to loosen her grip on the gun, letting it slip to the wooden floor that they had placed together, board by board just a few years ago when life was new and grand.

She falls into his embrace, and he whispers to her…

“You’re lucky. You’re always with me…I’ll be okay this time too, My Lady.”

But she doesn’t hear it past her loud keening sobs and he wonders if he even believes in what he’s saying.

* * *

Pain is red, but regrets are infinitely more colorful.

They’re the things he knows he’ll miss. First welcomes, first steps, good nights and friends and birthdays and a baby with _maybe_ pretty green eyes and slightly curling black hair and Marinette’s kisses.

But they’re his safe place as his head rings with another blow.

His throat is coated with blood once again, but there’s no Lady to give him CPR and give breath to revive him. There’s no luck here save for the one he remembers and the one he wishes to protect for those he loves.

He holds onto his regrets, because they give strength to say nothing when they ask again and again.

“Where is she? _Where is the Ladybug_?”

And Adrien feels a strange burst of pride because his Lady had been a formidable enough force in their minds to be a prime target,

But Marinette is no longer Ladybug. She’s just Marinette Agreste, and that’s _classified information._

So he does what any good agent does, and takes it with him because if there is one regret that he will _not_ keep, it is that he couldn’t protect his family.

And he falls to sleep, leaving behind a cell of black, white and red to a world filled with colorful regrets.

_“I love you, My Lady.”_

* * *

It works. They’re all safe. 

She’ll cry when her daughter looks at her with large green eyes peeking up from under dark, thick bangs and asks her-

“Mama, tell me the story of Ladybug and Chat Noir.”

But she’ll tell it anyway, because the world will not be black and white and red for _their_ daughter.


End file.
